Versify Me
by Kayenes
Summary: /The heading of the obituary is bold and final. It serves as an invitation and a final testament to a void all around her./ Olivia receives something devastating in the mail and has to decide on whether or not to reopen old memories and the chance to reunite with one of her first loves - The Stablers. Rated T for now.
1. Chapter 1

**Summary: Olivia comes across an obituary in the newspaper and struggles with the decision on whether to reach out to the Stablers.**

* * *

Versify Me

1.

"Nice to hear from you, Don," she mutters as she tears open the back of the small envelope in her hands.

She immediately furrows her brows.

It's not quite what she was expecting. A postcard would have been nice.

Instead, the newspaper clipping from inside rests gingerly between her thumb and index finger as her brown eyes glide down the Times New Roman font. Her other hand lightly grasps the small white envelope with her former captain's name on it, that had arrived on her desk this morning.

She doesn't dwell on why her former captain sent this to her because she knows it'll only drive her crazy over all the what ifs. But it doesn't keep her from feeling the flip flopping in her chest with a cloud of uncertainty forming over her head, and most importantly… worry pooling in her gut.

She lets her eyes skim the text once more and as she reaches the conclusion, her eyes rapidly flutter back up and they wash over the image peering back at her, trying to piece together what it all will mean very shortly.

There's soft glean in the eyes of the subject with paper thin skin which envelopes, entices, enchants her to inquire more about the soul that leaves behind just a grainy image.

Olivia licks her lips and tries to push down the swell of emotion that pushes against her diaphragm, daring to rupture her lungs as they burst out of her ribs.

A surge of emotion threatens to spill out of her then, but she syphons the bleed with a quick sniff and a deep breath.

She barely knows the name, or the person who brought it to life. She'd like to think she did in a previous lifetime.

She sits in silent awe at the sincere fact that a simple name can conjure up so many possibilities again.

With the simmer of a burnt out candle comes the flicker of something new and she remembers the details of a day nearly a decade ago that revealed nothing, and yet, so much after just one conversation, one trip, one discovery.

Olivia saw his life. She saw his eyes. She saw his soul. She saw his beginning.

With the waft of her parfum and the flibbertigibbet staccato she proudly accepted, Olivia knew him more in that moment, sitting in that little cafe in a far away, sandy, open seascape with freshly salted air than she had ever before.

It had stunned her.

But now it's too late to search those eyes for truths, for history, for purpose, for answers, ever again.

The paper slips through her fingertips onto the slick wooden surface of her desk and glides across, slowing to a halt next to her keyboard.

"Liv?"

Rollins's southern drawl creeps into her subconscious and draws her attention from the information before her.

Clearing her throat, Olivia pushes back slightly in her office chair before looking up, "Ahem, uh, yeah? Did you hear back from the guys?"

Shaking her head, and maneuvering her pregnant frame through the doorway, Rollins stops just shy of Olivia's desk.

"No. And, I wasn't prying, but I was skimming over files at my desk and I heard your phone chirp a few times. Loudly. I thought maybe you…. I thought maybe they texted you the information. Maybe, you and I could run the next lead they send back," she offers, and Olivia knows she's itching to get from out behind her desk. However, the other woman is very pregnant and Olivia has been trying to keep the squad room in check.

"You know Amanda, I think you can handle a little interrogation. When they bring in the girlfriend, I'll let you take point. She seems loyal, although I think we can get her to crack 2 on 1," she trails off.

Not entirely out of the haze of the previous moment, she then glances down again and the small newspaper clipping stares back at her.

The heading of the obituary is bold and final.

It serves as an invitation and a final testament to a void all around her.

Bernadette Stabler, 88, Beach Haven

One day. One conversation. A lifetime of history.

A history that the younger woman standing before her is entirely oblivious to.

She snaps out of her reverie when her cellphone chimes again on the corner of her desk.

Rollins's eyebrow tips up with a "that's what I thought" expression but Olivia brushes it off and picks it up.

She punches in her security code, and anticipates a text from Carisi or Fin to pop up with information on their suspected rapist plastic surgeon and his lover.

However, when her notifications pop up, it's not a call or text from her team, rather a handful of text messages from an unknown number.

After opening the text, she can't help but drop the phone on her desk as the message peers at her from the glowing screen.

It's a short, to the point slew of words that shouldn't mean as much as they do.

plese help us

"Is it them Lieu?" Amanda inquires curiously.

Olivia swallows and rereads the short text message, before closing it and opening the next one in a hurried secession.

Plas help him

Shaking her head, she peers up from her phone and pushes her black framed glasses atop her head while looking at Amanda.

"No. It's not them."

… _._

 _tbc._


	2. Chapter 2

**2.**

"Ruben, thanks for getting back to me so quickly."

"Not a problem, Liv. I've been itching to get back into the tech game after being out of commission for the past couple of years."

"No one's happier to hear your voice than I am right now. So what did you find out about that number? New York State right?"

"Yeah, that's the thing… the cell provider is in New York, but the call was transmitted from a tower in New Jersey."

Olivia furrows her brows, not wanting to be right, but also wanting to make sure of her gut before making any drastic decisions.

"Coordinates?" she asks with slight hesitation lining her voice.

Ruben sighs, "I don't know if this will help but the signal pinged from somewhere outside of Somers Point, New Jersey."

"Is that near Beach Haven?"

"I'm not sure, but I can look it up really quick."

Olivia hears him clicking away on his keyboard from his TARU office on the other end of the line, thankful for the small favor off the record. She silently tells herself that maybe, some way, somehow this was a wrong number. But something inside of her is raging, and she knows it's the blood from her heart, set on spin cycle within her chest and fast tracking toward her brain.

She's going to have a stroke if she doesn't figure out something, fast. As she waits for Morales, her phone vibrates in her hand and as she pulls the phone away from her ear, she notices another text message.

 _He wnts u to help him_

"Liv?" Ruben prods calmly from the other end. "It's 53 minutes from Beach Haven. 50 miles."

Olivia ruminates on this information and the new text message in her hand, her mind conjecturing who might end up being on the other end of a number from New York but pinging from somewhere conspicuously close to Beach Haven. _Flibbertigibbet._... Everything feels wildly out of control suddenly and she can't believe what she's contemplating.

She texts back the number feverishly.

 _Who is this? If you have an emergency, please call 911._

She rubs her mouth stumped as to how she'll react if she sees him. A million different scenarios flash through her body but she is jolted back into reality when Ruben calls out to her, "Liv? Are you still there?"

"Uh," she clears her throat. "Uh, yeah. I'm just taking in all this information. Thanks, Morales. I really appreciate you doing this for me. I owe you one."

"Oh back to Morales? I was liking Ruben. It's as if I hadn't been gone."

"I'm sorry," Olivia laughs, shaking her head, trying to rid herself of the uncertainties still ricocheting like pong balls inside her head.

"It's all good, " he acquiesces playfully on the other end. After a short moment passes, he presses, "Liv? Can I ask what any of this information is about? I know you mentioned it being off the record, but... "

Olivia looks down at her free hand as her middle fingernail scrapes against the pad of her thumb nervously. She looks back at the previous text messages:

 _Pls help him_

 _Plese help him_

 _h e ask fr you_

 _jelp him plase_

 _He wnts u to help him_

Her answer to Morales's inquiry almost comes out against her control, or maybe she's been wanting to say the word out loud for so long to someone who was there without any judgement.

" _Elliot_."

There's a short pause on the other end of the line. Then she hears mild shuffling and then a barely audible 'oh' and then, "I remember hearing about what happened, and the hoops IAB was going to make him jump through after the shooting. So, he's in Jersey now?"

"I uh, I don't know," she breathes out, wishing she knew.

"So… you've ... _not_ been in touch?"

Olivia rubs between her eyes with her free hand while holding her cell phone in the other hand. She's not entirely sure who she puts the blame on for the answer she's about to give. But she knows that at least part of it goes on herself and the other, larger portion, on _him_.

" _No."_

As the words escape her lips, her cell phone pings again, and it's a new text message, from the same number, from the same sender with the same typos.

 _no he ask fer u._

 **. . . .**

She splashes water over her face and peers at her reflection in the mirror. She sometimes wonders if the same person seven years ago would make the same decisions that she does now.

In the past, she's made mistakes, let her emotions affect the job, the cases, the people.

But she's never dwelled on how different she approaches things now. She's noticed that she's a little more reckless, a little more blinded, a little more ...one track minded.

She leaves much of that to her trauma; she'll never forget it, however in the past she was able to stabilize it. But now, maybe it's the potential of piecing back together what she lost or getting some sort of closure that sets her off, into an oblivious world of blind faith.

She turns the faucet off and reaches for a paper towel. She still wears makeup but that's another thing about herself she's noticed, self care. It isn't the makeup that completes her outer appearance, it's what shields herself from seeing the truth. In this moment she sees it the truth, skin wiped clean of the light blush, and lip gloss. The only thing remaining is the liner around her brown eyes.

The lines her forehead swell when she squints at herself in the mirror. They caw at her in the creases of her eyes in the reflection as she shakes her head...

The lines, the goddamn lines, that form every time she sees _him_ in herself…

A little piece of herself she tries not to shield away from the world because it's something shared, something sacred.

Something worth reconciling.

 **. . . .**

"Hey Rollins," Olivia calls out as she throws her jacket over her arm while pulling her office door closed behind her.

"Yeah? What's up?"

"Uh, looks like I'm going to have to take a few hours. I've gotta go somewhere and I don't think I'll be back before Noah gets home from school. Can you do me a solid, and call Lucy?"

Rollins bites her lip but nods her head, and picks up her phone. "Anything I should tell her specifically?"

"Uh," Olivia brushes past her and her coat ruffles against the side of Rollins's desk, causing the newspaper clipping from earlier to float slowly towards the ground. Rollins catches the slip of paper as quickly as her pregnant frame will allow her and Olivia notices her eyes skim over the image and text.

Amanda motions the piece of paper toward Olivia's office, "Does this have to do with anything from earlier?"

Olivia reaches for the piece of paper, and nods. "When Fin and Carisi get back, you can run the interview. Fin's in charge from there. Let Carisi back you up if needed."

Amanda nods as Olivia picks up her purse that had slid down her shoulder, but Olivia realizes the other woman isn't satisfied without any explanation.

"Hey Liv? About Lucy?"

"Oh yeah," Olivia sighs, brushing away the hair around her face. "Let her know I'll be back before dark. She'll know what to do."

"And if anyone around here… asks… where you are?"

Olivia swallows then begins to head toward the exits once more, "Tell them I got a call, I'm doing a wellness check."

Olivia doesn't look back to see Amanda's reaction as she glides through the precinct doors and heads toward the elevators. She stuffs the newspaper clipping back into her purse and pulls out her cell phone again and catches a glimpse of another text message sitting in her inbox. She wants to avoid making any outward calls, or sending texts for this exact reason.

She pulls up the text as she steps inside the elevator and reads it out loud, "Liv, I have to be in Newark tonight with my father. I can't pick up Noah. I'm so sorry. -Lucy."

Olivia sighs. She glances up at the floor numbers in the elevator and contemplates her next move.

Within seconds, a new text message notification chimes on her phone and she stops breathing.

 _I'm sorry to whoever this is. My son Eli got ahold of my phone. He's only 8. Everything is fine. But thank you for checking._

Olivia fumbles internally for a moment. Thoughts are jumbled, her hands are shaky, her skin is clammy and her eyes are blurry. But she's not crying.

Before she realizes it, she is calling Amanda. Her hands fidget over the buttons subconsciously, then the phone is ringing and the other woman's voice is on the other end of the line.

"Liv?"

"Amanda, can you take Noah _i_ nstead? I'm going to Queens."

 _tbc..._


End file.
